Arriving before the paperwork is complete is normal, and holding off on applications until a Dutch-language CV exists wastes the first months. Whole segments of the market recruit, interview and onboard in English, and knowing which ones they are changes where an early job search should be pointed.
You don't need one to start. Expat-focused boards like IamExpat Jobs, Undutchables and Blue Lynx list roles pre-filtered for English speakers, and LinkedIn lets you filter by job language. Sectors where English-only applications are completely normal: tech and scale-ups, e-commerce, agri-food multinationals, and international finance and trading firms concentrated around Amsterdam — though even at engineering and semiconductor employers, day-to-day internal communication can drift into Dutch depending on the team. A Dutch-language CV becomes relevant once you widen the search to local SMEs, public sector roles, or anything client-facing, but for the international-hire-friendly segment of the market, English is the working language start to finish, interviews included.